


Distortion

by generalsleepy



Series: Tumblr POTO Prompts [3]
Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Blood, Dark, F/M, Torture, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 06:46:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14665518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/generalsleepy/pseuds/generalsleepy
Summary: Alternate ending to the Final Lair where Christine trades Raoul's freedom for her own. Once she's gone, Erik makes good on his threat.





	Distortion

 

 

Erik yanked Christine to her feet by the arm. She kept her head down, but it was still obvious she was racked with messy, violent sobs. She stumbled, and Erik kept dragging her, uncaring if he wrenched her arm out of its socket. He ignored the hoarse, barely audible shout from behind them.

He at once felt as if he was watching himself from the outside, and as if he was fully in the maelstrom of his fury.

A wave of his hand opened the portcullis. She didn’t protest as he pulled her to the edge of the water. At one point, she fell. Erik grabbed a handful of her hair and ignored her shriek of pain as he flung her against the boat.

“You know your way out,” he spat.

She just covered her eyes and wept.

With a roar, he seized her arm and flung her into the boat. “Faithless whore!” he hissed. “Horrid little girl. Enjoy your freedom.” He pushed the boat off from the shore.

She was still bent in half and shuddering when Erik turned and walked back to his lair. He had thought that his last glance at Christine would be full of sadness and longing. Now he just felt loathing. He was disgusted with her. He was disgusted with himself. He wanted to wallow in the sick feeling, but more than that, he wanted to give free reign to his anger. Thankfully, there was an outlet waiting for him.

“She’s gone,” he said, aware of the unhinged shrill note in his voice. He lowered the portcullis behind him “She’s left you. Without even a glance behind. Not a single plea for your safety.”

He stalked around to face the trembling boy hanging from the high ceiling. Raoul was clinging to the noose around his neck. If he let go, he wouldn’t have an inch of slack. His toes barely touched the ground. In this state, he would eventually, inevitably tire, go limp, and slowly choke to death.

His face was turning red, and it was clearly becoming a struggle to breathe. If Erik were to leave him alone, he could probably linger for another hour or more in increasing pain and panic before he expired.

His expression didn’t show agony or terror, though. Even as he shook and gasped, Raoul was smiling. The stupid child was smiling.

“She left you. She’d let you die slowly, horribly just for her own freedom.” He sneered. “And you thought that she loved you.”

The look of satisfaction, even relief, didn’t leave the boy’s face. “Is she gone?” he rasped.

“Yes. Without so much as a backward glance.”

“Good.”

Erik stared. How had Raoul not understood? He shouldn’t have become delirious by this point. How could he not be destroyed by the utter betrayal at the hands of the woman he loved? The woman he’d wanted to marry, who he had been willing to lay down his life for. “Did you hear me, boy?”

“And you won’t pursue her again? You promise?” He broke off coughing. “You’ll keep your word?”

“I hope to never lay eyes on that loathsome woman again.”

Umbrage flashed in Raoul’s eyes at the insult to his beloved, but it was overwhelmed by relief at being assured of her safety. “Thank you.”

“Thank you? Thank you?!” Erik rushed forward, putting his face inches from Raoul’s as he all-but screamed. “You are going to die, do you understand?! Die, because she condemned you! So that she could enjoy the world above, she gave me permission to do whatever I will with you.”

“All that matters to me is that Christine is safe.” He couldn’t very well raise his chin in this state, but Erik could see the attempt at honor and courage in his bearing. “You can do whatever you want to me.”

Erik couldn’t even form his cry of rage into words. He grabbed Raoul by the throat, underneath where the noose was cutting into his flesh. Raoul let out a squeak, and his face quickly began to darken as Erik compressed the arteries there. “You stupid boy! You don’t know anything about pain! I will make you beg for mercy!”

Raoul couldn’t make a sound. His eyes were bulging. Erik couldn’t even take pleasure in the fear on the boy’s face, knowing it was a purely physical reaction.

He let go when he knew Raoul was about to pass out, leaving him gasping and coughing but unable to fill his lungs as much as he needed to. Pain alone, at least not on this scale, wouldn’t accomplish what he wanted. Raoul was all that he had left, and he was going to break him apart, crush him until there was nothing left.

“You realize that she doesn’t love you.”

Raoul shook his head, not a hint of doubt in his eyes.

“Why would she leave you here with  _me_ , with a  _monster_ , if she cared about you in the slightest? You’re nothing to her.”

“You’re wrong. All that I wanted was for her to be free. I’m happy to die if it means that she will live without you haunting her. To know that she was your prisoner would be worse than any torture. It was because she loved me that she would leave me here.”

Erik laughed, a loud, harsh sound that tore his throat. This boy thought that he knew about torture. Erik had been the personal torturer of the Sultana of Mazanderan. His hands were bathed in blood. He knew the sound of a snapped neck better than any song. He’d watched as his victims battered themselves against the mirrored walls of his Torture Chamber, wailing and begging, until they took the mercy of the noose.

And this boy thought that living without Christine would be worse than anything Erik could conceive of.

_No, not living without Christine; living with the knowledge that Christine was trapped with Erik. That she was the unwilling bride of a monster._

He had to erase that look of self-satisfied nobility off of the boy’s face. Raoul thought he was a martyr, a hero, that Christine loved him and he loved her, that  _he had won_.

He grabbed Raoul by the neck and squeezed again. Raoul ineffectively swatted at his hands. Letting go of the noose only put more pressure on his throat. He could only hang there, red-faced and with tears steaming down his cheeks. Erik freed one hand to punch Raoul in the face. He hit him again and again and again.

Driven by pure instinct, Raoul raised his arms to protect himself.

Erik snatched one of his wrists out of the air (he was so weak, so young, almost girlish, and there was a time when Christine would really have thrown her life away for this brat). He squeezed hard, until he drew out a cry of pain.

He took hold of Raoul's forearm with his other hand and twisted. He kept twisting until he heard the bone snap. Raoul’s scream was a broken, little thing. He ground and squeezed until he could feel the bones splintering.

When Erik stepped back, Raoul left his trembling, mutilated wrist where Erik had been holding it. He was struggling to hold himself up with one hand while not jostling the other. Tears and mucus ran down his red face. His eyes were bloodshot, and his breath stutterered. After this comparatively little treatment, he was blubbering like a baby.

“Are you still happy to suffer for your lady love? Do you still  _commend_  Christine for leaving you here?”

Raoul struggled to swallow, wheezing for breath. He looked up at Erik. His lips wobbled, but he gave a firm nod.

Rage swelled in Erik’s chest. He snarled, distantly reflecting that both sides of his face must look equally distorted. “Fool! Insolent child!” He grabbed the broken wrist and crushed until he managed to draw another scream from his abused throat.

“She doesn’t love you! She never loved you! She latched onto you because she thought that you could protect her from me. She knew when she left that I wouldn’t let you die easily. She knows that I’m mad. They all do. She knew that you would die slowly and in agony.”

He couldn’t let Raoul die thinking that this was a noble sacrifice, that he was dying for the woman he loved and who loved him. He couldn’t give the boy that comfort. That victory.

“Perhaps she thought that having lost her, I would content myself with you for a  _wife_. That I would take you as a substitute for what I couldn’t get from her.” He let out a humorless bark of laughter, before returning to his fury. “She doesn’t care what happens to you. Why would she? You promised to protect her, but you failed. You used her as bait. Do you think that she accepted your pathetic apology?

He pushed his face close to Raoul’s, so that he could feel the ragged huffs of breath on his cheek. "You never meant anything to her. You never mattered. She’ll forget you.” A memory came to mind, and he knew where to press. “She will find someone else to guard her and guide her. She never needed you. If she did, if she loved you, she never would have left without you on her arm. No one needs you.”

Raoul’s eyes were downcast. He choked out a sob. As Erik spoke, his arms had grown lax. As Erik let that last acid sentence hang between them, the hand Raoul had been using to grab the noose slowly fell to his side. Erik yanked his chin up to check whether he had passed out.

The boy was awake, though. His blue eyes, marred by the red point of a burst blood vessel, were unfocused. His mouth hung slightly open. Under the steaks of blood from the earlier beating, his lips were starting to shade blue. When Erik squeezed his jaw hard, he barely reacted. He looked lost, confused, like a hurt little boy.

Erik had broken him. He’d torn up that last shred of courage Raoul wrapped himself up in like a tattered old blanket. He could make the boy beg, plead for mercy. If he pressed, he thought that he could make him admit he would rather Christine had taken his place.

He knew the satisfaction that that thought gave him was the closest thing he would feel to pleasure after this night.

As Erik was contemplating what barb would hit the hardest, Raoul’s gaze focused on his. Something in that broken face, almost imperceptibly, hardened. When he spoke, only the smallest breath of sound escaped.

“No.”

Erik understood all that was contained in that ‘no.’ A rejection of everything Erik had said. He was probably beyond parsing the individual points or producing any more detailed rebuttal. He looked to be on the verge of consciousness. A battered, broken little thing, and he still wouldn’t hear a word against Christine. He still wouldn’t admit that he was dying in vain. Whatever Erik said, Raoul would die believing that it was a beautiful martyrdom.

Erik screamed. Something in him snapped.. He rained down blows down on Raoul’s head and body. He kicked at his legs, forcing the noose to hold his whole weight. Raoul could barely manage a few squeaks and gasps of pain.

It wasn’t enough. The horrible, spoiled, stupid brat needed to suffer for what he’d done. He’d ruined Erik’s life. He’d ruined everything.

Erik needed to punish him. He needed to destroy him.

He tore of his coat as he stumbled back. His eyes fell on a candelabra on the organ. The heavy iron felt wonderful in his hands. The flames went out as if arced through the air.

He smashed it against Raoul’s chest, swinging again and again and again. Eventually Raoul stopped trying to pull away from the blows. He just hung there like a slab of meat swinging with the force of each hit.

Erik only stopped when he his hands were bleeding from his death grip on the metal. The candelabra dropped from his hands as he stared at Raoul.

The boy was still. He was drenched in blood from dozens of wounds. The once-blond hair was stained nearly brown with blood. The body that had once been so beautiful, almost flawless, was a mangled wreck.

He didn’t know whether the boy was already dead. In any case, the damage was irreparable.

Erik was strangely calm, even detached, a he took hold of Raoul’s face. In one easy motion, he snapped the boy’s neck. If his heart had been beating before, Erik knew that it was stopped now.

He stepped back and surveyed his work.

Raoul was dead. The stupid child that had destroyed his only hope at happiness was gone. Erik had taken his revenge.

And… And.

He felt nothing. Nothing had changed.

The realization crept under his skin, slow and sickly. Raoul hadn’t meant anything. He hadn’t stood against Erik any more than the rest of the world had. Killing him hadn’t accomplished anything. It hadn’t changed anything. He had killed a young man just on the cusp of life for nothing.

They were right. They had always been right. He was a monster.

Christine had said: “It’s in your soul that the true distortion lies.” She had been the only one to look beyond his hideous face, and she had seen that he was just as monstrous inside.

He almost seemed to be watching himself from the outside as he found a knife and cut Raoul down. The lifeless body fell to the ground in a crumpled pile. He walked away, unable to even look at it.

He dropped onto the high-backed chair. He looked down and remembered how Christine had collapsed there and begged him to let her go.

They would find the body. Christine would know how Raoul had suffered, however willingly, for her freedom. It would destroy her as surely as Erik had destroyed her erstwhile love.

He had left nothing but a swath of destruction in his wake. And that was all he ever would do.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a prompt from Tumblr.


End file.
